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EF1 tornado in Clark County, Illinois

Tornado May 16, 2025 · Clark County, Illinois

EF1
Rating
10.7 mi
Whole path
100 yd
Path width
$15K
Damage as recorded

NOAA records this tornado county by county. Its path ran through Crawford County → Clark County → Sullivan County, Indiana; the totals above are for the whole tornado.

EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 100 yards (0.06 mi) — zoom in and the swath grows to true scale. Other tornadoes recorded nearby that day are shown faint.

What EF1 means. On the Enhanced Fujita scale, EF1 is moderate damage: roofs badly stripped, mobile homes pushed off foundations or overturned, windows broken, consistent with estimated gusts of 86–110 mph. The rating comes from a survey of the worst damage after the storm, not from a wind measurement, so it says as much about what the tornado hit as about how strong it was.

What the National Weather Service wrote

This tornado crossed from Crawford County into southern Clark County about 0.5 miles west of West York at 6:48 PM CDT. It continued eastward, causing EF-1 damage to trees and a farm outbuilding on the west side of the town of York before crossing the Wabash River into the National Weather Service Indianapolis County Warning Area in Sullivan County, Indiana at 6:54 PM CDT.

The wider storm

Scattered supercell thunderstorms developed in the vicinity of a nearly stationary frontal boundary draped along I-70 during the afternoon and early evening of May 16th. The storms first formed along a Springfield to Saint Louis line, then tracked east-northeastward generally south of the I-72 corridor, causing sporadic wind damage...most notably in the Decatur and Effingham areas. In addition, the highly unstable airmass to the south created vigorous storm updrafts which supported very large hail. Upon initial storm development, a few stones as large as golf balls occurred on the southeast side of Springfield to near Riverton. However, an even stronger cell later in the afternoon dropped 3-inch diameter hail (larger than a baseball) in Robinson in Crawford County. Another nearby storm produced an EF-1 tornado that tracked across portions of northern Crawford and southern Clark County before crossing the Wabash River into Sullivan County, Indiana.

Began near York (39.1722, -87.6825).

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 1251019. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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